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As a real estate appraiser, I applaud you trying to do research instead of just relying on what realtors say. To answer your question up front, find a realtor f

As a real estate appraiser, I applaud you trying to do research instead of just relying on what realtors say. To answer your question up front, find a realtor friend who will allow you to use their access to your local Multiple Listing System (MLS). Specifically, if you can find someone to help you with this, have them show you a Statistical Market Conditions report for a full year from the day you’re gathering this info (known in industry as a 1004MC. They can easily create this in most MLS software like FlexMLS). The trick is defining the amount of house (sq footage), the lot size (your prerogative on space), and any other features you deem important to your new home, along with being specific to the area you want to live in (a MC report over a whole city will not give the granular detail you might be looking for). Since it is a part of most appraisal assignments , I use this constantly to make sure that my head is in the game when it comes to what has actually sold in the market for the type of house I’m appraising, as well as seeing what people choose to list for. The top of the page usually has a table with headings that look like: [12-7 months ago][6-4 months ago][3 months ago - current] The items in the table go over amount of listed and sold properties, as well as the days on market, along with median statistics. Super useful to get a feel of what has actually happened, not what people want to happen. The issue for those who do not work in the real estate field is that you do not have access to all the data we have, and it is a shame because people should be able to make well informed decisions on their own rather than getting advice from someone who stands to gain monetarily from the transaction you are making. The other thing that rubs me the wrong way when I hear people looking to Zillow, Opendoor, or any of the other iBuying firms for what their house is “actually worth” they do not realize that all these companies are doing is scrapping or has their own access to local MLS systems and layering their own pricing models over the data that is already there. I used to work as part of an internal team at one of these places before I kept into the family business, and I know that we were not the only company doing so to get people to use our platform. Ultimately, my advice is if you can get your hands on access to one of these systems, because MOST data on these multiple listing services is regulated to make sure realtors don’t lie about their listings, and is usually tied into your state’s assessors info (especially if you are in an open data state).

ryanmercer 5y ago
>find a realtor friend who will allow you to use their access to your local Multiple Listing System (MLS). Some states anyone can access it, here in Indiana MIBOR lets you see Indiana MLS listings https://property.mibor.com/search https://property.mibor.com/search and, good grief... there are a lot of multi-million dollar homes here apparently.
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mistrial9 5y ago
I wrote code to access one California MLS, and learned a lot about it in the process. I learned that at every level, information is hidden and obfuscated! While I was involved, a National MLS association in Chicago was taken to court over its practices and lost. Many MLS are slightly different. With all that said, I am glad its not completely standardized, or worse Federally administered, overall (why? exercise for the reader)
- Otternonsenz 5y ago
  Very true, and not all of the data we pull in our practice will give you everything on a house. It’s up to the Technical admins that implement, but I am unsure of how much is just set up as they bought it or working with a team to implement certain features. I understand the wont for not having a completely standardized system or federally administered system here in the states; But in my own experience in my state, it would make work a lot easier in outlying areas where an MLS is owned by one realty group that does not make it easy for outsiders to use, even though we do regular work in that area. There certainly could be a push in the US to have a national standard to hold MLSs to, as most loans are federally backed or are set up in such a way to be sold in secondary markets that could be bought by government backed entities. There has also been talk among lenders and those in the risk management space of real estate for more normalized data, to make it easier for things to be portable or more ready to feed into an automated value model.

ryanmercer 5y ago

>find a realtor friend who will allow you to use their access to your local Multiple Listing System (MLS). Some states anyone can access it, here in Indiana MIBOR lets you see Indiana MLS listings https://property.mibor.com/search https://property.mibor.com/search and, good grief... there are a lot of multi-million dollar homes here apparently.

deleted 5y ago
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mistrial9 5y ago

I wrote code to access one California MLS, and learned a lot about it in the process. I learned that at every level, information is hidden and obfuscated! While I was involved, a National MLS association in Chicago was taken to court over its practices and lost. Many MLS are slightly different. With all that said, I am glad its not completely standardized, or worse Federally administered, overall (why? exercise for the reader)

Otternonsenz 5y ago
Very true, and not all of the data we pull in our practice will give you everything on a house. It’s up to the Technical admins that implement, but I am unsure of how much is just set up as they bought it or working with a team to implement certain features. I understand the wont for not having a completely standardized system or federally administered system here in the states; But in my own experience in my state, it would make work a lot easier in outlying areas where an MLS is owned by one realty group that does not make it easy for outsiders to use, even though we do regular work in that area. There certainly could be a push in the US to have a national standard to hold MLSs to, as most loans are federally backed or are set up in such a way to be sold in secondary markets that could be bought by government backed entities. There has also been talk among lenders and those in the risk management space of real estate for more normalized data, to make it easier for things to be portable or more ready to feed into an automated value model.